National CPS News Archive

National News Coverage

The first step in fighting poverty is understanding the struggle of the poor, according to the organization charged with leading that fight in Manatee County.

That's why the Manatee Community Action Agency is starting a program aimed at giving those who want to make a difference a crash course on what it means to be poor. The MCAA will hold a Life on the Edge workshop and panel discussion March 18 at First Baptist Church Family Life Center. It's the starting point of a $20,000 anti-poverty initiative paid for by federal stimulus funds.

CTV News has learned an 18-month-old child passed away at the Stollery Children's Hospital, two days after an alleged incident at her foster home in Morinville.

The child's biological family says it may be a case of shaken baby syndrome. The biological family tells CTV News the toddler had only been in foster care for about two months. They say the little girl suffered severe brain damage, and that doctors told them the toddler may have been shaken to death.

Child protective services are investigating the presence of a stun gun at the house where the children of Michael Jackson live, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

Quoting an attorney for the children's grandmother, Katherine Jackson, the report said that the investigation was launched after one of the children's cousins bought a Taser gun on the internet and played with it in the house.

Dale Welch recently walked into a Starbucks in Virginia, handgun strapped to his waist, and ordered a banana Frappuccino with a cinnamon bun. He says the firearm drew a double-take from at least one customer, but not a peep from the baristas.

Welch's foray into the coffeehouse was part of an effort by some gun owners to exercise and advertise their rights in states that allow people to openly carry firearms. The fight for retailers heated up in early January when gun enthusiasts in northern California began walking into Starbucks and other businesses to test state laws that allow gun owners to carry weapons openly in public places.

Every year, 400,000 pregnant women enter the United States illegally to birth their babies on American soil. Their children become instant citizens and their mothers become instant wards of the American taxpayer.

They enjoy taxpayer paid deliveries in our hospitals, unlimited medical health, K-12 educations, 'free' breakfasts and lunches, 'free' English as a second language classes and assisted housing, food stamps and social security benefits. Over 240,000 legal and illegal immigrants pour into our country every 30 days.

Since implementation of the CDC mass vaccine program we have gone from about 2-3 to about 41-42 on the international infant mortality list. Yes, this means that a high rate of American infants never live to see toddler hood.

Only one major country has a higher infant death rate than the USA. What a disgrace. This alone should be enough to replace blind trust with severe doubt as we consider the health recommendations of our government and medical establishments.

A LACK of weekend support for foster parents means they often end up having to supervise access visits with the children's biological parents.

The issue arises when access is ordered through the courts, and there is no flexibility on the terms and conditions of the arrangement. The concerns were raised by the Irish Foster Carers Association (IFCA) which is calling for out-of-hours social work services.

The New Brunswick government is hiring 32 new social workers as part of an effort to enhance child protection services.

The review followed a scathing report by the province's child and youth advocate in January 2008. Bernard LeBlanc reviewed New Brunswick's child welfare services in the wake of the death of a toddler in 2004.

WINNIPEG, Manitoba -- A Canadian judge has ruled two children raised by white supremacist parents in Manitoba will remain in foster care as the couple is unfit to care for them.

Justice Marianne Rivoalen issued a 34-page decision denying custody to the Winnipeg stepfather and mother of the 9-year-old girl and her 4-year-old half-brother, the Winnipeg Sun reported. The children were taken by provincial officials in 2008 after the girl showed up at school with swastikas and white supremacist slogans drawn on her arms and legs.

Nine traumatised children, who were rescued from the clutches of traffickers in Chennai last month, reached here today after nearly eight months of nightmare.

Alarmed by the number of children being trafficked out of Manipur and dumped in illegal homes in the southern states of the country, the state social welfare department has decided to seek the help of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka governments in tracing them.

Britain's fostering system is being strained to breaking point in the wake of Baby P. More children are being put into care - and yet there is a desperate shortage of foster parents.

It is unusual for anything to shock this department, staffed by people who have spent their careers wading through the routine tragedies associated with family breakdown, drug ­addiction, mental illness and child abuse, and yet something about the case of Baby ­Hannah has stunned the office momentarily into silence.

The amount of time children spend in institutional care may affect how their brains develop.

A new study shows that children adopted early from foster care didn't differ from children who were raised in their birth families but that children adopted from institutional care performed worse than those raised in families on tests measuring visual memory and attention, learning visual information, and impulse control.

A new study of young children in orphanages in Bucharest, Romania, has found that children placed in foster care before age 2 were more apt to develop secure attachments to their foster parents than those who entered foster care after age 2.

The study is based on data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, the first randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care. The researchers studied 169 children: Some had been in institutions from birth, some were institutionalized at birth and later placed in foster care.

Ten Americans were detained by Haitian police on Saturday as they tried to bus 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic, allegedly without proper documents.

The Baptist church members from Idaho called it a "Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission," meant to save abandoned children from the chaos following Haiti's earthquake. Their plan was to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a rented hotel at a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, where they planned to establish an orphanage.

A Brooklyn mom jailed in the disappearance of her 7-year-old son still denies she spirited him away from a foster home - but coughed up some addresses where he might be hiding.

The boy, Patrick Alford, vanished Jan. 22 from the lobby of the Spring Creek Development in Starrett City, Brooklyn, where he was living with a foster family. Rodriguez denied she had anything to do with it, but the Administration for Children's Services doesn't believe her, and Judge Terrence McElrath tossed her in jail for contempt.

At a time when the public debate is focused on health care, I write this letter to address the one health care epidemic that America is not discussing, but should - child abuse fatalities.

On a national level, four organizations are joining hands to help prevent child fatalities. They are the National Children's Alliance, the Every Child Matters Education Fund, the National Association of Social Workers, and the National District Attorney's Association. Together, these four organizations are launching a Call to Action.

The Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, today released details of measures being considered for inclusion as part of the new national standards.

New national standards to safeguard the health, safety and wellbeing of children living in foster homes in all States and Territories will be developed by the middle of the year as a key measure under the Australian Government's National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children 2009-2020.

The number of children taken into care by the Health Service Executive increased by nearly 300 last year and the economic downturn is said to be partly responsible.

A report presented to a meeting of the HSE earlier this month shows there were 5,694 children in care at the end of November 2009, up from 5,396 in January 2009 - a 5.5 per cent increase. Most children in care are in foster care. Of the 5,694 children in care at the end of November last 3,422 were in foster care with families unrelated to them,